Ronald Reagan (person)

To add to what is something of a list of Reagan and his acomplishments (or lack thereof), many people accuse Reagan of allowing AIDS/HIV to spread like wildfire through this country in the 1980s. How? (you might ask) His method was two-fold. First, AIDS spread through the early high risk groups at a time when Reagan was cutting public health expenditures by massive amounts so that groups like the National Institutute of Health and the Center for Disease Control were unable to spend any money on anything AIDS related. His other mistake (or method, if you will) was his refusal to even mention the words "AIDS" or "HIV" in public, which helped keep it out of the public eye (why? because it was a disease related to homosexuals and drug addicts and obviously (insert massive sarcasm) these people are sick to begin with). Clearly Reagan was not the sole reason HIV spread as it did (you can also blame the media, the publics conservative view of homosexual, drug addicts and immigrants, the gay sexual liberation of the later 70s/early 80s, the blood banks, ETC), but he certainly played massive role in the spread of it.

On a lighter note, while less and less of us have any recollection of the New Deal, Reagan happened to be major proponent of Roosevelt and his "big government" New Deal. This is a ironic since he came out about 20 years after FDR died to rail against big government and the "Evil Empire".